


Only Love Can Hurt Like This (Ineffably Yours: Stolen Nights V)

by SecondHandNews



Series: Ineffably Yours: Short Stories [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining, Art, Good Omens Big Bang, History, Humour, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Love, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, ineffable husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:35:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22283461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondHandNews/pseuds/SecondHandNews
Summary: Before there was paradise there were stolen nights. And before there was Morocco there was Florence. It was a safer time. A naive one, too.*It was the honour of one’s lifetime, they said, to be painted by the Master. For your likeness to be traced by those genius hands was, after all, the closest one would ever get to immortality.For an angel and a demon, however, sitting for Da Vinci was a favour for an old friend. It was a two day trip to their beloved Italy, a chance to rest for two turns of the Earth.What dear Leonardo had neglected to tell either celestial being was that it wasn’t a solo sitting. It was, in fact, a sitting for two.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffably Yours: Short Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1467589
Comments: 61
Kudos: 153
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	1. Your Love Is (Like Throwing Myself Overboard)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinymathom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinymathom/gifts).



**July 1504. Florence, Italy.**

Crowley swung open one of the heavy wooden doors of the studio, sauntered through and paused at the top of the steps, lowering his sunglasses as he squinted into the darkness.

“The Master of Light, eh? Where are you, you old madman?”

There was a rounded rumble of a snore cut short, a jolt in his periphery as a figure rose to life above a cluster of discarded canvases that were spread across a pockmarked, paint-stained desk.

“The devil has cast his shadow over beautiful Florence.”

Leonardo Da Vinci’s state of being existed in two forms: sleep deeper than death or all but vibrating with energy. There were no slow blinks to recalibrate himself after a night stolen by dreams, no sleepy yawns as a bedtime appetiser. It was the flick of a switch. There was no time to waste. Dreams were unconscious innovation, after all, and ideas that bloomed to life under the cover of slumber were nothing if not divine inspiration.

“My dear Antonio, welcome! It has been too many years, my friend.” He ascended the steps, silver-white beard streaming back across his shoulders, advancing age nothing of a hindrance, joints moving as easily as they always had. They kept him young, he would say, those stairs, would take them at a light jog on occasion, just to remind himself that he could.

Crowley clapped him on the shoulder, their customary embrace, while Da Vinci held his face in both hands and turned it this way and that, shaking his head at the heavy dark glasses the demon had taken to wearing, thick lenses obscuring his snake eyes from the outside world.

“I have something for you,” he said finally, about-turning to hasten down the steps and begin rummaging through a statuesque marble cabinet standing humbly in the corner of the room.

 _That’ll have pride of place in a museum by the end of the century_ , Crowley mused, taking the steps two at a time, that languid stride the only gait befitting a demon who liked to spend as much of his existence as horizontal as possible.

He had grown fond of the gifts Da Vinci would bestow upon him, little inventions that were dreamed up by that unparalleled mind, tiny ingenuities that ranged from the eccentric to those so mundane Crowley could barely fathom they hadn’t been pulled into being yet. It was one of the many reasons his fondness for the Italian had flourished so acutely over the decades. That flare for the creative, for the ridiculous, that could never be tamed. Those questions, _all_ those questions. What happens if I break this? What if I rip this into a thousand pieces and put it back together as something new? What if we forget what we know about light, about flight, about life? What if we tear it all down and start again? Crowley smiled. Like recognised like.

“Here!” he called, ushering Crowley closer and plucking the demon’s sunglasses from his eyes. “Away with these cumbersome things. _These_ , these are the ones for you.”

He unfurled the arms of a lightweight pair of glasses, deep scarlet-tinted lenses encased in a thin frame, the inside of each arm embossed with the Master’s distinctive swirl of lettering. He caught Crowley glancing down at the signature that adorned each arm, pressed his lips together in a smile. “Advertising is advertising, my friend.”

Crowley shook his hair away from his collar and let the old Italian slide the glasses over the bridge of his nose. Da Vinci took a step back and nodded with satisfaction as he snapped the discarded glasses in half and tossed them over his shoulder, where they skittered across the ground and came to a stop against a small pile of debris, casualties of failed inventions. “Now you are ready.”

“Yeah, yeah, who am I channeling today?” Crowley knew the routine, had spent enough hours reclined on a chaise drinking wine while Da Vinci reimagined him as whichever model had failed to turn up to the studio. It wasn’t a bad way to wile away a day, drinking his way through a couple of bottles of Italian red while switching the placement of his limbs whenever Da Vinci looked away, just to rile him up. The mortal world might have feared the wrath of the Master, had heard tell of infamous temper-tempests that could be heard outside in the street, but to Crowley there was nobody he liked to aggravate more than that good old short-fused painter, Leonardo.

Well, nobody human, at least.

Before Da Vinci had a chance to explain that Crowley would not, in fact, be channelling anybody other than himself that day, the studio was bathed in early morning light as the door was gently nudged open and a silhouette Crowley could have recognised with both eyes closed stood at the top of the steps, backlit by sun rays, hands fumbling by his sides as he called out rushed apologies. “So sorry I’m late, my good man, absolute nightmare getting up here from Siena at this time of… Oh, good lord.”

Aziraphale trailed off, letting go of the door and jumping as it slammed closed behind him. Crowley felt himself break into a smile that was all together too happy, let his tongue rove mischievously across his teeth for good measure.

“Angel.” He accompanied the word with a curt nod, bit the smile away from his lips.

It had been, what, twenty years? A quick lunch in Capetown, a stroll along the seafront, just time for one or two little moral debates before they had parted ways, knowing their next meeting lay too far in the future, whenever that might be. And now here he was, that beautiful, forbidden angel, standing right in front of him like a miracle willed into being. He felt his palms dampen, a human response he should have been impervious to. It was funny, he always thought, how easily surprise reunions with Aziraphale rendered him his most human, the demonic dissolving away until he was barely more than a man standing in the presence of the one who could undo him with nothing more than the sound of his own name.

“Crowley, what are _you_ doing here?” A little tut, a customary roll of the eyes. Outwardly, all the tics of annoyance. Inwardly, the pounding of his heart, a flicker of anticipation in his stomach.

Charades were there to be kept up, had become a rather cherished game over the years, if Aziraphale was honest. _Yes, yes, I'll pretend to be utterly weary of your presence and you, my sinful tempter, you pretend not to notice my eyes all over you. Deal? Jolly good_.

“I might ask you the same question.” Crowley weaved his way up the steps, circling Aziraphale as he reached the top, pausing at the angel’s shoulder to let that sweet, stormy scent of vanilla undercut with myrrh wash over him. _Too long_ , he thought, _it’s been far too long, my angel._ “Or we could ask the man in the know. Oi, Leo, what’s the plan?”

“Yes, yes, the plan. Come now, my friends, we have work to do.” Da Vinci waved them down the steps, whirling through the studio as he pulled at a ream of thick paper, slashing through its length with a neat blade and spreading it across the desk, perching a jagged black rock on either end to hold it in place. He pulled the heavy black curtains back from the windows, nodded curiously at the two of them as the morning’s rays streamed in. “Let there be light, as they say.”

***

“You.” Da Vinci pointed a chiselled length of peach chalk towards Aziraphale, who was sitting neatly on top of a stool, hands folded peacefully in his lap. The angel smiled radiantly, bathed in that sweet glow of attention from the Master. “You are my muse.”

Next to him, Crowley was a tangle of long limbs perched barely upright on the stool’s smooth circular surface. He sighed, looked plaintively towards the comfortable familiarity of the old chaise nestled by the sunny windows. He was a demon made for stretching out in the sunshine like a cat, not sitting to attention like some kind of conformist… _angel_.

“And you.” The Master turned his attention to Crowley, gave him a quick glance up and down and pursed his lips. “You…are entertaining.”

He turned away to adjust his chair, fiddling with the height until it was just so. Another one of his creations, allowing him to sketch from the perfect angle. It would be another few centuries before the invention caught on but, in time, it would come to be embraced by office workers the world over who had little to no idea the notion of adequate lumbar support was dreamed into existence by none other than Da Vinci himself.

“ _I’m_ entertaining,” Crowley whispered proudly, shaking his shoulders a little to reinforce his point. When Aziraphale didn’t turn to look at him he repeated the words, louder, reached out a foot to nudge the angel’s calf, left a dusty footprint against his cream knee-high socks.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Aziraphale tutted, reached down to brush the evidence of their connection away, flicked his fingers against Crowley’s knee as a warning.

“Now, now, my children, if you could contain yourselves until the day is over, I would be most grateful.” Da Vinci turned back to them, clapped his hands together over the sound of Aziraphale’s spluttered protestations while Crowley leaned back and basked in his favourite sound in the world: angelic dithering.

Da Vinci blew sharply on the end of the chalk, pressed the tip of it to the paper and then dropped it, barking out an expletive that rattled around the room before he leaped to his feet and raced back to the marble cabinet in the corner of the room. “Foolish man!”

“What the hell is this?” Crowley hissed, once Da Vinci’s back was safely turned. He hooked his index finger into the frilled ruff that danced around Aziraphale’s neck, pulled it loose and then let it snap back into place against the angel’s skin. “You look ridiculous.”

“ _You_ look ridiculous,” Aziraphale spat back, breaking focus for a second to tug at the open collar of Crowley’s black shirt, where a fine tuft of dark hair was visible in the centre of the deep V-neck. He forgot himself, just for a moment, fingers curling around the fabric, thumb travelling slowly over the demon’s chest. _Too long_ , he thought, eyes roving over the sharp length of his jaw, curved lips that parted just so as Crowley felt Aziraphale’s fingers graze his skin, _it’s been too long, my love._

“Master Fell.” Da Vinci’s voice came then as Aziraphale snatched his hand away, swallowed tightly and trained his eyes on the table in front of them. Too slow.

“Just…smoothing a wrinkle from our friend’s collar,” he explained quietly, heart hammering against his chest. _It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re safe in here._ “Details, Leonardo, are the key to success.”

“Your hands, gentlemen, if you can keep them off of each other, have places to be.” Da Vinci registered the flush of pink in Aziraphale’s cheeks, the widening of his eyes. _Perfect_ , he thought, _it lifts his eyebrows beautifully_. He approached the table, slapped an armful of props down in front of them and drummed his fingertips against the wooden surface.

“You.” He picked up a tight scroll of paper, pressed it into Aziraphale’s left hand. “Hold this. Not too tightly. Yes, perfect.”

And then he turned to Crowley, wrapped a hand around the demon’s wrist to pull it free from his thigh, then deposited a shiny red apple into it. “And you, hold this. Elbow on the table. Lovely.” The final item was a book, beautifully-bound, the scent of freshly tanned leather rising up between his two models. He positioned it between them, brought Crowley’s spare hand to rest against one corner, Aziraphale’s against another, fingertips fanned across the spine. He took a step back, framed his index fingers and thumbs in front of his eyes. “Very good. Now, hold your positions, it’s time to begin.”

Crowley glanced down at the apple, cast a furtive look in Aziraphale’s direction, found the angel staring resolutely ahead, gaze softened so precisely Crowley wondered just how long after receiving Da Vinci’s summons he’d spent practising the expression.

“Angel,” he whispered. “ _Angel_.”

“What?” Aziraphale growled, pausing to cock his head ever so slightly to the side, softening his lips into the whisper of a smile, then giving himself a little congratulatory nod as if to say, _yes, that’s the pose._

“Bit close to home, isn’t it?” Crowley opened his mouth in a grin, nodded down to the apple. “Angel, hey, Aziraphale. Bit close to home. Apple. You know? Eden.”

“ _Yes_ , Crowley, it’s not lost on me.”

Silence then. Merciful, sweet silence. It was easier, Aziraphale reasoned, to forget Crowley was by his side when his vision was fixed on the cluttered stretch of wall on the far side of the studio. He let his focus turn to the sprawling tour of half-finished sketches, works of art that would never see the light of day, anatomical drawings of creatures he was fairly certain hadn’t been invented yet. Still, despite the front row seat he had to Da Vinci’s most private collection of work, there was a masterpiece sitting to his left that refused to be ignored.

His hair was longer than it had been in Capetown those decades ago, coming to rest a fraction above his collar, a curtain of fire swept back from his forehead. His glasses, _they were new_ , turned his eyes into a flame of sunset. He swallowed a smile. A demon in rose-tinted glasses, was there a better way to describe Crowley?

“…Angel?”

“ _What?_ ”

 _How is it possible,_ Aziraphale thought, _for you to be my favourite, most precious thing in the entire world and, at the same time, the thing that will drive me to distraction with a single word?_

“I missed you.”

_Oh, you sweet demon, how dare you?_

***

“Useless!” Da Vinci cried, tearing the paper in two and balling a fist in each half, roaring up at the ceiling as he threw the crumpled strips of paper towards Crowley and Aziraphale. The ruined sketches rolled to a gentle stop in front of the table they sat behind and Da Vinci jumped to his feet, pacing back and forth, breath heaving in frustration as he berated himself over his failure to capture the softness in Aziraphale’s left eyebrow. “Clumsy, talentless man! Start again. This time, as if you have an ounce of talent in your godforsaken veins.”

As the Master sawed another width of paper free from the ream at the side of his desk, an angel and a demon were indifferent to the fury pulsating around the room, having witnessed such displays tenfold over the years they had, separately up until that day, been in Da Vinci’s acquaintance.

Crowley glanced across at Aziraphale, found the angel’s eyes roaming listlessly across the ceiling. They had been sitting still for long enough that it was almost midday and Da Vinci had devolved into a bottomless pit of rage three times so far that morning. First, Crowley’s left index finger had moved to obscure the flare of sunlight bouncing back from the apple’s shiny surface, then, Aziraphale’s chin was tilted too far down after he’d failed to resume his original position after turning to sneak a glance at Crowley and, finally, there had been the eyebrow incident.

While Da Vinci’s human subjects were left quivering in fear in the face of the Master’s explosive fits of frustration, the angel and demon had come to find his artistic tantrums endearing, just another one of Leonardo’s little quirks.

“Look at him go.” Crowley kept his head still as he murmured the words through barely moving lips. In front of them, Da Vinci was stalking to and fro in front of the empty page, swinging his fists as he chastised himself. “Big one, this time.”

“My eyebrow isn’t that hard to capture, is it?” Aziraphale wondered aloud, his eyes following the Master’s journey left to right, left to right, as rhythmic as a pendulum.

“Look at what you did,” Crowley muttered, nodding towards Da Vinci, who was swiping wildly at a speck of imagined dust on his pristine paper. “He’s really lost it this time. You and your ineffable eyebrows.”

Aziraphale let out an extremely unangelic snort, quickly disguised it as a polite cough as Da Vinci’s head snapped up, eyebrows knitted together in a thunderous glare.

“ _Sorry_ ,” he mouthed apologetically.

Pacified for the time being, Da Vinci closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath, raised his chalk, and began again. Fourth time’s the charm.

***

As Crowley’s right elbow was sketched into existence, and a break for lunch became a distant pipe dream, the demon had grown tired of holding his position and was attempting to orchestrate a fierce battle underneath the table.

Staring straight ahead, keeping his expression neutral, he let his right leg fall to the side until his calf rubbed slowly up and down the length of Aziraphale’s left shin. The angel bit his lip, felt a thrum of desire flare in his stomach. _May the Almighty forgive me._

Crowley glanced across, saw the jump in his chest as his breath quickened. _Ha._

“Sorry,” he whispered, eyes focused on the sketch of a flying machine on the opposite wall. “Just gets uncomfortable in one position for too long.”

He let the words drip from his mouth, intention barely concealed. Honey drizzled slowly from a spoon.

 _Oh_ , Aziraphale thought, as a shiver struck him like lightning, _oh, you wily, sinful…Two can play at that game._

“Yes,” he whispered back, pursed his lips primly. “Always good to change up the position, isn’t it? So tiresome otherwise, I always find. Variety is the spice of life, after all.”

Next to him, Crowley grinned, felt that familiar swell of desire that was never far away when he was in Aziraphale’s company. _There you are, my wicked little angel. Holy hell, I’ve missed you._

“So,” Aziraphale breathed, eyes flicking down to watch the chalk in Da Vinci’s hand curve across the paper in a sweeping arc and then, like a spell had been cast, his own hairline was there on the page. Art, the angel had always thought, was its own unique form of magic. “Been keeping busy? You’ve been awfully quiet since South Africa.”

“A long sleep. Lost six years somewhere,” Crowley whispered back, pausing as Da Vinci looked up, shot a glare in his direction. “Missed the turn of the century.”

“A dull affair, if I’m honest. Nothing of interest to report.” _There never is, not really, not when we’re apart._ “Oh, except a new wine I discovered in Jerez. I think you’ll like this one. Earthy, smoky, just your sort of thing. I have a case with me, in fact. Perhaps a glass or two later?”

Next to him, Crowley nudged his knee under the table. “Perhaps, indeed.”

And then, at the risk of angering the Master, they broke focus once more, turning to look at each other to share an indulgent smile, a secret promise of _later_ , of _tonight_.

***

“The sun, the sun, my flaming mistress, I am forever at your mercy.” Da Vinci paced over to the windows, stared up at that yellow star in the afternoon sky and sighed as he reached out a single finger to trace her circumference in the air. “There is still time, my children, before the daylight is snatched from our grasp.”

“Mmm.” Crowley debated a hasty snap of the fingers to speed up the sun’s crawling descent towards the horizon. The sooner she bid Italy farewell for the night, the sooner he could slink off behind Aziraphale like the devoted shadow he was. Twenty years. It could have been an eternity. It had felt like one. Even that blissful six year nap hadn’t dulled the ache he felt deep in his bones, the burning need to steal away with his angel, to block out the outside world, even for an hour, a minute, a single breath. “How are we looking over there?”

“They say that art is a window,” Da Vinci began, voice distant as he steepled a delicate paintbrush between his index finger and thumb and leaned close to paint an intricate detail as easily as if he was still sketching with his trusty chalk. “That it opens the mind, treats the senses to a glorious view. I have always disagreed with what they say. I don’t believe art is a window, I believe it is a mirror. It reflects and it reveals, even those things we try to hide, those things we don’t even realise we are hiding. To look at art is to look at the truth, to look at what lays hidden beneath the masks we all wear. Art, my friends, is the magic that captures what lays unsaid.”

Sermon complete, the Master resumed painting in silence, head bent low over the canvas he had begun work on hours before, when the sun was high in the sky and the threat of darkness barely rumbled in the distance. Confident Da Vinci was lost to his work, Crowley glanced across at Aziraphale to find the angel already looking at him, brow furrowed in concern.

“ _Does he know?_ ” The angel mouthed the words, inclining his head towards Da Vinci, as if there was anybody else in the world he might be talking about.

“ _Of course not._ ” Crowley mimed back, shaking his head hurriedly. It was all fun and games to tease Aziraphale but this, he knew, was the one thing neither of them would ever joke about, the only sacred thing they had that was worth protecting.

It must have been a coincidence, he decided; it was easier than going down the rabbit hole of worrying that it was anything else. When you were one of two entities keeping a secret from heaven and hell and everything in between, it was easy to get paranoid, to look for danger when there was nothing but an eccentric Italian painter musing about art and honesty.

“Now, gentlemen, I have a question for you, if you’ll indulge me.” Da Vinci paused to add a flourish to a particularly angelic curl that corkscrewed out from Aziraphale’s right temple, then looked up at them, smiling as he caught the look of panic they shared. “Why so afeared, my friends? This isn’t an inquisition. No, I wanted to ask you what brings you to my country so many times. Such busy beings that you are, always working, always travelling, but something brings you back to Italy time and time again. I wish I was arrogant enough to believe it is my company but, please, tell me.”

“I like the food,” Aziraphale said, as if it was obvious. He heard a little exhale of amusement puff out from his left and turned to give Crowley a sharp look. The demon fell silent, raised a palm to urge him to continue. “As I was _saying_ , I like the food, the architecture, the beautiful lines of your cities. I love the art, the mirrors that you paint, all of you. I love the books, the little bookshops full of twists and turns, labyrinths of stories. It’s magic, a celebration of the arts, of love and life. That’s why I can’t stay away, dear Leonardo, that’s why I love this place.”

Da Vinci held Aziraphale’s eye for a moment, then nodded proudly, as if he thoroughly approved of the angel’s heartfelt speech about the beauty of his country. Then the artist turned to Crowley expectantly.

The demon shrugged, looking down at his fingernails as if he was inspecting them for dirt. “I just like the women.”

“What?” Aziraphale hissed, head snapping round to stare incredulously at Crowley, mouth opening and closing as if he couldn’t fathom what he had just heard. _After all this time, after everything we’ve put on the line…you like the women?!_

“Master Fell, _please!_ ” Da Vinci banged a fist against the desk and Aziraphale turned back to face him, reluctantly, eyes trained on Crowley’s face until he was forced to look away. “It’s a revelation that has shocked us all to the core, I can assure you, but _stop moving_.”

He resumed painting then, focus lost to the detail on Crowley’s shirt that he was determined to perfect before they lost the light for the day. Aziraphale stared straight ahead, too overwhelmed with a multitude of emotions to even acknowledge Crowley’s presence. A moment later he felt pressure against his thigh, looked down to find the demon’s fingers curled around his leg.

“Their clothes, angel. I like their _clothes_. So stylish.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, sighing heavily. _You’ll be the death of me, you wily trickster, and you know it._

***

“Keep your eyes to yourself, my rebellious friend.” Da Vinci shot an accusatory finger in Crowley’s direction as the demon adjusted his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, wondering how the old man could possibly have known he was doing his best to steal a glance at the painting he was carefully manoeuvring to a nearby easel, hidden from prying eyes behind an open cupboard door. “This needs to sit for a while. Ah, time: our enemy, our saviour.”

While Da Vinci busied himself protecting the painting from view, Crowley and Aziraphale clambered down from the narrow stools they’d spent the majority of the daylight hours perched on. Crowley let out a low sigh of relief as he linked his hands behind his back, folding forward to bring his arms into a deep stretch, his shoulders pulling tightly until they all but groaned in protest. Next to him, Aziraphale was brushing chalk dust from his trousers, tutting as he observed the way it covered everything in the studio in a thin cloak of powder.

“Tomorrow we will begin again.” Da Vinci strode towards them, making his grand announcement as if he hadn’t already briefed them on the two day sitting earlier the day. He paused then, narrowing his eyes as he looked between them. “And tomorrow you will sit still, both of you, won’t you?”

“Maybe.” Crowley shrugged, firing back a little grin as if he’d see what sort of mood he was in the next day before he committed to good behaviour.

“ _Yes_ , we will, Leonardo. We’re very grateful to have the honour of sitting for you, I can assure you.” Aziraphale smiled warmly at Da Vinci, hands clasped together in front of his chest. He looked across at Crowley at the perfect time to see the demon rolling his eyes behind his glasses, and let out a little huff, elbowing him lightly, just so he knew he’d been caught in the act.

“Don’t you elbow me,” Crowley hissed, flicking the angel on the arm with a stinging blow from his forefinger.

“Don’t you _flick_ me,” Aziraphale countered, pushing him gently, both hands braced against his chest. He could have pushed him harder, should have really, if he wanted to reinforce his point, but, for a moment, he was lost to the feeling of Crowley’s chest against his palms.

His silent reverie on the cool sweep of skin that made up Crowley’s upper chest was cut short as the demon retaliated with a shove of his own, hand making contact with Aziraphale’s shoulder and pushing him hard enough that he staggered back half a pace.

Five and a half thousand years of travelling the globe as colleagues-turned-acquaintances-turned-friends-turned-whatever-the-hell-was-going-on had led to the pair of them being well-versed in the noble art of bickering. Their verbal back and forth could wile away the hours between dusk and dawn with neither of them pausing for breath before the next loaded barb could be fired back. No, arguing was not something that caught either of them off guard. The one area, however, where they could still surprise each other, was on the rare occasion when things turned physical. Play fighting in the few-and-far-between safe spaces firmly out of heaven and hell’s view, they had come to realise over the years, was a rather ingenious way of getting to wrap their hands around each other without arousing any sort of suspicion. It looked, to the rest of the world, like two grown men getting into a scrap, which was nothing if not a foregone conclusion for two grown men with a difference of opinion.

As the angel took a step back, faux-affronted at the notion of being _pushed_ so inelegantly, Crowley fixed him with a raised eyebrow which was, unmistakably, both permission and a challenge.

_Come on, angel, it’s been too long and I’m-_

There was no time for Crowley to finish his train of thought, as that was the exact moment Aziraphale dashed towards him with all the frantic momentum of a pig hurtling towards a puddle of excrement in which to roll. With his shoulder leading the way, as if he was the master of a contact sport that had not yet been invented, Aziraphale barrelled into the demon and knocked him clean onto his back, all the breath forced out of his lungs until he sucked in a gasping breath as the angel pounced on him, legs straddling his hips and fingers wrapping around his wrists to pin them to the ground.

“You lose, demon.” He leaned in close to whisper the words, a smile of satisfaction on his face. To hear it spoken from Aziraphale’s lips with a purr of unmistakable affection was the only time Crowley could hear his cursed title breathed into the air without flinching. Wielded by the only being who had never made him feel _less than_ for what he was, the word became something matter-of-fact and, in turn, something that didn’t matter very much at all, as if what he was truly saying was: _Yes, I might be an angel and you might be a demon but what does that matter when I have you gripped between my thighs?_

“Do I?” Crowley asked, looking up into those blue eyes as he tilted his hips just enough to press them harder against the angel’s. He registered the look that passed over Aziraphale’s face, the jump in his throat as he swallowed tightly. And then, as if he hadn’t done quite enough for one afternoon, he slid an arm around the base of the angel’s back, pulling him down until they were nose to nose, lips so close they were all but touching as he spoke again. “This doesn’t feel much like losing to me.”

And then there was a sharp clearing of the throat and a long-suffering sigh from above, as both angel and demon looked around to find Da Vinci standing over them. “I’m still here, gentlemen. While I’m very flattered you are comfortable enough to consider this place an extension of the bedroom, if you are so desperate to conduct your thinly-veiled foreplay that you cannot resist grinding on my studio floor, please, don’t let me keep you.”

After a moment of horrified hesitation Crowley moved first, wriggling out from underneath Aziraphale and pushing him away as if he couldn’t bear to be in such close proximity to an _angel_ , of all things.

Spurred into action, Aziraphale mimicked his disgusted expression, clambering to his feet and dusting himself off, shooting one last glance at the demon as they strode across the studio in opposite directions. “Perish the thought. Ghastly.”

***

“Testing out one of your prototypes on me again, eh?” Crowley grinned, blinking two golden snake eyes as he slid his sunglasses off and held them up to marvel at the sleek lines, the warm rose-coloured lenses that did enough to mask his eyes and bathe the world in a soft pink glow, as if he was walking through a dream with every step. “Will we see everybody in Italy wearing them in a few years?”

“With any luck, my friend.”

Da Vinci laughed, turning away and clapping Crowley on the back as Aziraphale looked on in horror. The angel stared at Crowley, wide-eyed, gesturing frantically towards the painter as if to say _he’s right there, he can see your eyes, what in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?_

“I know all about our mutual friend’s…unique aesthetics, Master Fell.” Da Vinci murmured the words without turning around, merely gazed out of the window at the moon as Aziraphale wondered, not for the first time, if the rumour that he had eyes in the back of his head was more fact than fiction.

“You need to be more careful,” Aziraphale whispered, words a low hiss as Crowley sauntered past him.

The demon paused, leaning in so close that his words were a breath against Aziraphale’s skin. “Live a little, angel.”

He left the angel in his wake, retrieving the bag he left on the steps of the studio and ferreting around in it until he pulled out two items with a smile. One, a little wooden box that was a logic puzzle that rendered it impossible to open for all but the highest of intellects, he pressed into Da Vinci’s hands. While the Master was busy examining the box from all angles, a look of wonder lifting his brows as he marvelled at its secrets, Crowley tossed a book in Aziraphale’s direction.

“Got this for you. Thought I might run into you here. Inevitable, us bumping into each other in Italy.”

“How did you…?” Aziraphale trailed off, words dissipating into nothing but awe-struck mutterings as he swept a hand across the dusty cover and read the title over and over in a bid to convince himself he was really holding it in his hands, that it wasn’t a dream he’d slipped into while trying to balance on an uncomfortable stool while Da Vinci ranted about the light.

He’d told Crowley about the book decades earlier as they’d shared a meal in a far-flung spot in the Scottish Highlands, had sighed wearily as he’d recounted its rarity, had lamented the possibility that he would never be able to track it down, to discover the secrets and promises that lay within its pages. And yet there he stood with it clasped in his hands, every word pristine on the page, ready to be discovered at his leisure. He felt a warmth radiate through his body that began in his heart and slowly, slowly trickled out and up until he was bathed in it, until it was pouring out of him and he could barely see straight, his vision swimming as the magnitude of what he was holding in his hands dawned on him. It wasn’t the book, not really. It was Crowley, of course, it always was. It was the fact he had listened to him, that he’d remembered, that he’d done whatever he had needed to do to find the book, to buy it, to carry it with him for all of those years on the off chance they would run into each other. “Crowley, I don’t know what to…”

But the demon didn’t hear him. Aziraphale looked up, found him locked in conversation with Da Vinci on the other side of the studio. Crowley was doing an impression of…well, Aziraphale couldn’t be sure, something that involved two fingers curled through his hair like horns and some sort of raucous cantering back and forth. Beside him, Da Vinci’s head was thrown back in laughter, the lines in his face lifted and smoothed as he bellowed out a laugh that was nothing but pure joy. He looked younger in Crowley’s presence, sillier, something softened around the edges, a teacher rather than a master.

Aziraphale watched the demon as he rampaged up and down the length of the studio, head bent low as he committed to whatever impersonation he was apparently excelling at, if Da Vinci wiping a tear from his eye and slapping one hand against his knee was anything to go by.

The angel smiled fondly. _I’m in love with an idiot. But he’s my idiot_.

And then, a heartbeat later, the weight of his thoughts sunk in as both understanding and mounting dread pounded in his chest. It was the first time he had dared think the words, though they had been swirling a breath below the surface for millennia. But that was that. He had thought them, he had given his feelings a name, and now there was no going back.

_I love you. That’s what this is. I love you, and it will destroy us both._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good afternoon my dears! Time for a new IY story :D. This is actually the Stolen Night story that takes place before Morocco...about two hundred years before, give or take.
> 
> A few months ago I signed up to the Good Omens Big Bang event and this is the story that came out of it :D I've never done anything like this before and I got to work with two mega-talented artists - I've seen one of the pieces of art already and it is *so* *stunning* I cannot wait for you all to see it!
> 
> The date this fic will finish and the art will be revealed is February 5th, so stay tuned for more Da Vinci in early Feb. Until then, I really hope you enjoy this (especially you, ShinyMathom, dearest! :D) and I'll see you soon for chapter two.
> 
> As is customary, the playlist for this one is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5y2uaVFAjHppnAyB6Pp5Xf


	2. Love is Torture (Makes Me More Sure)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Come with me,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley felt his heart soar until he followed the angel’s gaze and found he wasn’t looking up at the stars but across at the bed tucked away in the corner of the room.

Inside a plain little guesthouse tucked away on the corner of an unassuming street a short walk from Da Vinci’s studio, an angel and a demon were locked in a fierce battle that had been playing out for millennia. As was customary, hell was losing. Badly.

“Look, Crowley, it’s quite simple,” Aziraphale slurred, one hand gripping his wine glass to his chest as if it was a precious treasure, blood red liquid slopping dangerously close to the rim. “The rook slides back and forth, side to side. Straight lines, nice and neat. The queen, however, she can go whichever way she pleases, and…”

“Well, that sounds very enlightened.” Chin resting against the palm of one hand, Crowley broke through his sulk for long enough to raise an eyebrow. He watched Aziraphale’s fingers curl around the white queen’s chest, slide the piece back and forth across the board in a fanning motion, just to further illustrate the lesson he had taught tens of times throughout history.

“It does, doesn’t it?” The angel paused, looking up and catching Crowley’s eye, finding a glint there that sent a tremor through him. He swallowed deeply, eyes locked on the demon’s, and for a moment his next point about how best to weaponise the queen for a successful end game attack was all but lost.

Annoyance at losing yet another game temporarily abandoned, the demon’s lips flicked up at the corners as he watched Aziraphale try and fail to regain his train of thought. _You feel it too, then,_ he thought, eyes roving over the angel’s furrowed brow, the quiet anticipation in his gaze. _Tonight, angel, we disappear. Tonight, we pretend, if only for a little while. It’s been too long. It’s always been too long._

On the table next to the heavy wooden chess board Aziraphale had summoned with a crisp snap of his fingers, three wine bottles stood tall and empty, satisfied they had set the two celestial entities in good stead for whatever the stars had in store for the coming hours. Aziraphale had been right, Crowley _had_ thought his new alcoholic discovery was excellent, though the demon would have happily guzzled any beverage placed in front of him that would lower both his inhibitions and the nagging ache in his back after a day of attempting to balance atop the spindly stool Da Vinci tortured his victims, _ahem_ , subjects with.

“Come on, angel.” Crowley tapped a hand against the edge of the table, the sound cutting through Aziraphale’s daydream of tugging the demon to his feet and pushing him back, back, back across the room until there was nothing he could do but fall into bed and surrender. The angel looked up, shaking his head to refocus his thoughts, teeth finding their way to worry at his lip as he searched Crowley’s eyes for any hint the demon could read his mind. “One more game, let’s go.”

Satisfied his fantasising was clandestine, for the present moment, at least, Aziraphale smiled sweetly. “Forgive me, Crowley. I thought it would be prudent to go over the rules one more time.”

“I know the rules, we’ve been playing chess for centuries.” When Crowley replied his voice was tight, each word clipped as though he was biting them out against his better judgement.

“Oh, I rather thought you preferred to make up your own rules as you go along. If you already know the rules what’s your excuse for your millennia-long losing streak?”

The demon looked up, heaving a weary sigh as he found amusement dancing in the angel’s eyes. “I could exterminate you where you stand, just so you know. Now, let’s go. I’ll beat you one of these days, angel, even if it takes another hundred years.”

“Better make it five hundred then. Always pays to be realistic.”

***

The mood in the room turned from gentle teasing to unparalleled demonic concentration as the night ticked by and both angel and demon fell silent, barely looking up from the board as the game took shape. Crowley had fallen back on the tried and tested technique that garnered him an element of protection from Aziraphale’s quiet but ruthless play style. Castling the king gave the crucial piece a buffer that bought him time to try and second guess the angel’s strategy, though it was nigh-on impossible given that he could change his mind like the wind, seamlessly adapting to each of the demon’s moves as if every decision Crowley made played perfectly into his hands.

Still, Crowley had taken one of his knights in a surprising display of subtly that the angel couldn’t pretend he had seen coming. Next had been a bishop who had strayed too far into the path of a rook, and suddenly hell had the upper hand, for once.

 _Stay. Calm._ Crowley hissed the words to himself, held his breath until he felt his heartbeat begin to slow. _Don’t throw it away now. You’re going to do it. You’re finally going to beat that sneaky, arrogant, beautiful…_

“Checkmate.”

The demon looked up, found Aziraphale beaming happily back at him as he nodded down at his queen, who had Crowley’s king in a fatal corner. Crowley looked desperately at the board, calculating every eventuality that might lead to his survival. _What if I… No, the knight. Or, maybe, this way… No, that bloody queen._ As every possible move led him towards loss, Crowley felt red hot fury begin to swirl in his veins.

“Come on, dear, it’s over. Let’s just chalk it up to experience, eh?”

Aziraphale held out a hand for the demon to shake, their customary assurance that no chess game would ever tear them asunder, not when heaven and hell had already reserved the privilege.

Crowley looked up, eyes dangerously narrowed. “You didn’t say check.”

Though he knew it would only enrage the demon further, or perhaps _because_ it would, Aziraphale smiled cheerily across the board, voice just kind enough to read as patronising. “We’ve been over this, Crowley. You don’t _have_ to say check, it’s a courtesy.”

“You’re an angel!” Crowley spat, hands slamming against the board as he jumped to his feet, chair careening over behind him and clattering against the stone floor. “What’s the bloody point of you if not to be courteous?”

“Now, now, my dear, nobody likes a sore loser. All’s fair in love and war and…chess.”

Crowley stared down at the black king, found no proud regality there, just a cowed monarch who had let the forces of heaven slowly close in around him until it was too late. There was no escaping it. He had lost. Again. It was the fourth time that night and there, in a little guesthouse in Florence, Crowley gave in to demonic rage.

“For fuck’s _sake_!” he wailed, palm slapping against the wood as he flung the board across the room, scattering the pieces skyward with such ferocity that one black rook stayed resolutely wedged in the corner where the wall met the ceiling. “Fuck this, fuck chess, and fuck _you_ , Aziraphale! I was so close, I was _so close_. Three more moves and I would have had you.”

“If we’re going to get technical you’ve had me since Eden,” Aziraphale mused, shocked to discover he’d spoken the words aloud, albeit so quietly he wasn’t sure if Crowley had even heard them above the sound of his own unadulterated anger. Then the demon paused mid-bellow and Aziraphale realised he had, in fact, heard every word.

“Don’t try and…distract me again. This is what you _do_ , angel. Whenever you think I _might_ get one over on you, you come sweeping in with some…seduction…”

Against his better judgement the angel let out a little laugh, if only because his clumsy attempts at denying his feelings for hell’s earthly emissary being referred to as a _seduction_ rather tickled him.

“This isn’t _funny_!” Crowley picked up a white pawn that had toppled over onto the table, slinging it across the room with every ounce of strength he had, barking out a laugh as it smashed against the wall and fell to the ground. “See that? Heaven’s pawn, just like you.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair and waiting for Crowley to tire himself out. He caught the demon’s breath hitch in his throat and nodded. Any moment now. “Well, Crowley, there’s no need to be petulant just because you lost. You should be used to it by now.”

“I swear to you, Aziraphale.” Crowley’s voice was thick with menace as he braced both hands against the table, fixing Aziraphale with a glare so hellish it would leave great men cowering in his presence. “One more word.”

The angel looked back at him, as calm as if the demon had asked what he fancied for dinner, then summoned the board back into place with a quick flick of his wrist. The pieces righted themselves, taking their positions as if they hadn’t just been thrown into orbit, even the rook who had previously resided in the wall. “Now, in case you need a refresher of the rules before we try again…”

Teeth clenched and lips pulled back in a grimace of pure hatred, Crowley lurched across the table, fingers twisting in Aziraphale’s collar, pulling the fabric tight against the angel’s neck as he yanked him forward until they were nose to nose over the chess board, the demon’s chest heaving as he contemplated his next move.

“This has always been your problem,” Aziraphale murmured, amusement dripping from every word, his breath a whisper against the demon’s lips. “Always so _passionate_ , always charging in without a plan.”

When he finally gathered himself well enough to speak, Crowley’s voice came out with a tremor loaded with millennia of frustration, of hope. “I’ve got a plan, thank you, angel.”

“Go on then, demon.” The angel tilted his chin forward. It was just a fraction but, as was so often the case, that was all it took. His top lip came to rest against Crowley’s and he froze, stock still as he waited for the demon’s next move. Would he shy away, overtaken with whatever fear had held them back for so long, or would he finally, at last, cast heaven and hell aside and give in? _Kiss me_ , Aziraphale thought, closing his eyes as desire pounded through him, _kiss me and tear the world in two_.

There was no feeling of lips crushing against his, no fingers working their way into his hair, twisting until there was pleasure that tip-toed the line into pain. Aziraphale opened his eyes, found Crowley’s gaze meeting his, soft and somehow sad at the same time.

“It could be like this, you know,” the demon whispered, words formed gently against the angel's mouth. Almost a kiss. Almost. “Every day.”

“Not could be,” Aziraphale said, one palm braced against the table, the other sliding up into Crowley’s hair, his fingers disappearing into soft red waves, a blaze of heat in the half light. “One day, Crowley, this will be every day.”

Being turned away from was something Crowley had grown uncomfortably used to over the years. A dog in the street, a fellow patron at a bar, other demons, it didn’t matter much who, it all played into that same primal fear of being alone, of being other, of being something so intrinsically evil that even the briefest touch would leave misery behind. But then there was Aziraphale, the best of them all, the only one who had leaned into him when everybody else would shrink back as if they’d placed their palm against a burning coal. Just that one angel, quietly taking his hand and holding it tight, silently telling him _I’ve got you, I see you, even if you can’t see yourself._

Crowley’s gaze flicked away and he let out a little laugh of derision, of disbelief that one day would be any day at all, because how could there there ever a day when an angel would stand side by side with a demon and love him? It felt too perfect a fantasy to truly believe it could ever be real, even in the dying light of a candle that had almost burned itself out. “You don’t want to do this, there’s poison inside me.”

Then Aziraphale was pulling him closer until they were nose to nose, lifting his chin until their lips were that maddening hint of a breath apart, so close. Too close. There was a sudden jolt of pain, the feeling of the angel’s teeth sinking slowly, mercilessly into the soft flesh of his bottom lip until he moaned against that sharp flare of pleasure. And then, release. Aziraphale whispered words against his lips, more a breath than anything else, sounds he could taste on his tongue. “Then poison me.”

Their eyes met across that infinitesimal distance, a space that was nothing at all, the golden darkness of fireside embers meeting all the light of an open, endless sky. Crowley brought a hand to Aziraphale’s cheek, pressed his forehead to the angel’s and breathed out a sigh filled with all the endless longing of so many hundreds of lifetimes. How easy it would be, he thought, to follow Aziraphale’s lead, that sweet angel who would only ever lead so far, to close his eyes and press his lips to the angel’s, to tempt him into every wicked sin he had spent so many nights dreaming of, so often that it was as if he had already loved him a thousand times over.

 _Patience_ , he warned himself, as there was an almost imperceptible curl of fond recollection in his chest. _Patience, of course. You were right. You always were, about everything. It hurts, sometimes, how much I miss you. Do you know what I would give to talk to you, archangel, even for a moment? To sit with you in the forest, to watch the light fight its way through the leaves, to watch it persist the way it always does. The way we all do. You, me, him. It’s all we can do, in the end, isn’t it, be patient? I listened to you, see, I remember everything you ever told me. It might have taken me a while to understand, it always did, but I got there in the end. If I could ask you one question, just one thing, I would ask you how to make him happy. Do you see it in him, the sadness he carries every step of the way? Sometimes I catch him smiling at me and I think I might be a blessing. And then the sun rises and I remember that I’m not that, I’ll never be that. Nothing but a curse. Has he told you about me, I wonder? Do you know that I’m here, that I made it back up to the sunlight, back to the trees? It’s something, Raphael, even if it’s not everything. It’s something._

There were moments, fleeting, terrifying moments, when Aziraphale strayed so confidently into the path of temptation that it was all Crowley could do to bury his nails in his palms, close his eyes and talk himself back from the edge. It was the archangel Raphael’s quiet, insistent words, spoken so many thousands of years ago, that Crowley held in his heart in those moments that felt as if he was swaying on the crest of a hillside, as if something as gentle as a breeze could sweep him over the edge into the chaos of freefall. Patience. It was safety, after all. Perhaps it really would save them. Perhaps it would save them all, in the end.

 _Patience, yes, but denial? They never said anything about that,_ Crowley reasoned, as he felt a heat begin to build in his stomach, a warmth flush in his cheeks. _It’s been so long, angel, hasn’t it? Has it been the torture for you that it has for me? It’s time, isn’t it, for us to escape, even if it’s only for tonight?_ As his mind raced with fantasies of escape and survival, of new beginnings and better worlds, he leaned down to trail kisses slowly up the length of the angel’s neck, ending with a gentle bite that left Aziraphale groaning a long, low sigh into the darkness.

 _If this is what it is to love a demon, to be in love with something evil, then let me perish in the fire, let me burn for eternity._ The angel tightened his grip on the demon’s waist, the other hand curled around his forearm, steadying himself as he leaned across the table. There was nothing but that smooth stretch of wood between them but it could have been a gaping cavern of a thousand miles, an infinite spray of stars and worlds and galaxies. A fingertip or an endless void, it didn’t much matter, the worlds that stood between them could never be a tangible thing. If all that lay between them was solid ground it would never have mattered, if the distance between them was a thing that could be closed by something as simple as taking footstep after footstep then an angel and a demon would have disappeared into the stars a lifetime ago. But it wasn’t. And they hadn’t. So that was what it had to be, a stolen night hidden amongst the tens of thousands of lonely days where they walked the globe and worked and prayed and thought of ways to come back together, if even for a moment, because sometimes a moment was all there was time for: a promise, a smile, and then one more goodbye.

“Come with me,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley felt his heart soar until he followed the angel’s gaze and found he wasn’t looking up at the stars but across at the bed tucked away in the corner of the room. It might not have been an invitation to run away into the stars but it was, even so, an invitation to escape somewhere, at least.

Aziraphale led him across the room, fingers entwined as if the idea of letting each other go was something neither was willing to entertain. Not that night. They were so rare, after all, so few that they could be counted on one hand. Five nights. Five escapes. Five fantasies of a gentler world, where love was currency and the richest of all craved nothing but full hearts and warm beds.

 _Have we sobered up?_ Crowley wondered, looking down at his feet and finding them quite capable of following Aziraphale to bed. _Yes. We must have. Somewhere along the way. Good. I want to remember this, all of it. Every word, every curve of him, the warmth of his skin, his breath against my cheek, the smile I don’t have to see, the one I can feel in the darkness._

“Where are you taking me tonight?” Aziraphale asked, when they were curled up under the warmth of a heavy blanket, Crowley’s cheek pressed to his neck as the demon coiled around him, tucking his knees to the back of the angel’s thighs, one arm draped across his waist, the other tracking a slow path back and forth through his hair.

It was an unspoken understanding, of course, that Crowley was the one to plot their fantastic course through the imagined forks in the road, those other lives they might have lived if only existence was a different beast, if only they had the luxury of choice. That wild and wonderful imagination, that big heart, quashed though it was by the confines of hell, was still there, underneath, unexercised but for those stolen nights. _Let it out,_ Aziraphale wanted to say, _let everything that stays buried in your heart wind itself around us. Take me to all of the places you dream of, every one of them, let’s stay a lifetime in each, let’s love every part of it, and then let’s find the next one, and the next._

“Somewhere warm,” Crowley murmured, pausing to kiss the angel’s neck. “No, somewhere hot. Somewhere so hot the air is a haze, somewhere you could get drunk on the heat. We’ll have been busy, you’ll have been sent to one corner of the Earth and I’ll be in another. We’ll have been apart, perhaps, for some weeks, or months. A celebration, of course, when we come back together, when we come home. You’ll be waiting for me, as you always are, grumbling under your breath as if you think I can’t hear you. You’ll tell me off when I finally meet you on the corner where our home meets the restaurant next door. Or is it a spa, do you think, next door? Yes. The scent of rose on the air. It would find its way into the fabric of everything we own, that smell, it would follow us however far away from home we found ourselves. But we wouldn’t mind, would we, angel?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, turning his head enough for his lips to find the demon’s cheek. Another kiss, for fantasy’s sake. “No, we wouldn’t mind, my love. Something to bring us home, even if we were a thousand miles away.”

“But we wouldn’t be a thousand miles away, not that night, we’d be back together, finally. No work talk, not that night. Just celebrating. Maybe we’d eat first, one of those long drawn out dinners where you insist on sampling the entire…”

“Excuse me.” Aziraphale smiled, bringing the demon’s hand to his lips and nipping at one of his knuckles. Crowley snatched it back with a laugh, let his fingers walk their way back down to the angel’s waist, coming to rest against the warmth of his body, a safe place to rest. “And you’ll drink your way through the wine cellar, I’m sure.”

“Of course. It’s tradition. How else would I wile away the hours while you ask the chef to bring you seconds?”

“ _Excuse me!_ ”

Crowley closed his eyes against the darkness, let the steady beat of his heart thrum against the angel’s back for a moment, and then he continued, letting images of the place rise in his mind before he spoke them into existence. “A place where the stars are bright, where it feels like you could see every one of them if you wanted to. Somewhere where the moon seems to hang low in the sky, like you could reach out and feel her against your fingertips. And when the sun shines she shines with all the brightness of an eternal fire, a flame that could never go out, not even if a hurricane from heaven itself was sent to extinguish her.”

“It sounds too beautiful to be real, the way I remember heaven back before…” Aziraphale’s voice, thick with sleep, trailed off as he lost himself to a recollection that was bittersweet, a memory of a place that had done nothing to deserve that quiet contemplation.

Crowley gave him a moment, fell silent as he stroked a track from the angel’s waist to chest, spread his palm across the angel’s skin and anchored himself closer. “Oh, it’s real all right. Winding streets, so narrow it feels as though they might close around you to keep you safe, to keep you hidden. There’s a freedom to that labyrinth. You can lose yourself in those streets, each one a mirror of another. And I’ll meet you there when enough time has passed, when we’re ready to get lost again, when we can hardly bear to be apart.”

“I can never bear to be apart from you. I miss you now, even, because I know goodbye will come soon enough.” _No,_ Aziraphale thought, _don’t think about that, don’t think about goodbye. It will come as surely as it always does but not in this moment, or the next. For now he’s here, for now you have him and he has you._

“Always too soon. But we have tomorrow. And you could stay. Tonight,” Crowley murmured, letting the fantasy of that other life hang in the darkness, that dream of a home where the windows were misted with rose-scented steam and mornings were spent counting all of the sunbeams that lit the angel in his bed.

“I could.” Aziraphale found the demon’s hand, laced their fingers together and sighed, clasping at the fragments of a life that had already begun to fade to grey, disappearing like words lifted clear by the wind.

Crowley smiled, felt a surge of love at the angel’s gentle rejection. _I’m sorry for trying to pull you one step further than you can follow. Patience, I know._ “But you won’t.”

“I can’t.”

“I know, angel.”

They settled into silence, and when enough time had passed that he trusted himself to be able to look at the demon without acting on every desire pounding through his bloodstream, Aziraphale turned over to find the silhouette of the love of his life staring up at the ceiling, unmoving.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” the angel asked, used to the way Crowley would let the echo of their fantasy lives rock him gently to sleep. He had grown fond of it, watching the way his eyelids twitched as he dreamed, of stroking his hair and whispering promises of _someday you won’t have to dream to find peace, someday I’ll find a way to bring it to you, my love._

“So I know that this is real, that you’re really here, so I know that it isn’t a dream.” Crowley shifted, turning onto his side until they were face to face, lit by the milky glow of moonlight.

Aziraphale reached out a hand, traced the demon’s features with his fingertips. _I wish I had the words to tell you how it feels to be here with you, to touch you, how perfectly happy I feel when we’re together, alone, no audience but the moon and stars. Which of them did you make, I wonder? The ones that shine the brightest, or those that hang so far away in the sky that they seem to be half-imagined, as though they could only be hiding a secret nobody is ready to hear?_

“Don’t,” Crowley said, catching the angel’s hand and holding it still. “Not unless you mean it. Not unless we can stop running. Someday, at least. That’s all I need. Someday.”

Aziraphale guided the demon’s hand to his face, then lay his own back against Crowley’s cheek. And there they lay, forehead to forehead, fingers gently exploring each other’s skin until the moon began to fade from the night and it was time for the angel to leave before it became impossible.

“Someday, my love.”

***

When Aziraphale was drawn to contemplation, as he so often was, he regressed to the most basic tangible things that brought him reassurance. Comfortable places, soft things, old books, fine wine. These were the constants in his life, the things that brought warmth when existence felt cold, stability when it felt as though the axis of his world had shifted yet again.

He had left Crowley some hours before with one last, lingering gaze, his path following the door as it closed between them to give himself a heartbeat longer to stare into those eyes, burning bright with hope and desire. He had paced a sad trail back through the city to his own guesthouse for the night, not that sleep was on the agenda, and had pulled a worn armchair up to the window. There he sat, watching the moon track her path through the night sky, raising a bottle of wine to his lips and wondering how, when, if his promise of _someday_ was just that, a promise, or nothing more than a foolish pipe dream.

How could it ever lead them anywhere but despair, the angel wondered? How could loving the enemy ever be anything other than sin, something that betrayed his nature, something that went against everything heaven preached as virtue and purity and goodness? But it didn’t feel like sin. Sin was an ugly thing, something evil, something that reeked of despair and hate. With Crowley he had only ever known trust and sweetness, even if it was buried under a hefty layer of sarcasm and teasing.

Aziraphale sighed, taking a deep swig from the wine bottle and leaning his head back against the soft cushion of the chair. Italy. The land of dreamers and storytellers and lovers. How many others, he wondered, had sat in that very spot, attempting to drink themselves to understanding? The only thing he had come to understand that night was that existence would be so much simpler if Crowley had never fallen, or if they had never met atop Eden’s gate, or if they had never come together again and again and again, each time deepening whatever unfathomable feeling it was between them that… _No._ Aziraphale shook his head. _No, this isn’t something unfathomable. I know what this is. It is the simplest thing of all. This is love. I love him. I love him and I hurt him. I hurt him every time I leave before sunrise, every time I have nothing to say but someday. I am the reason for that look in his eyes that hides beneath the hope: the fear, the doubt, the sorry acceptance that this half-love from the shadows is all that he deserves._

“If he could forget me,” the angel whispered, leaning forward as he spoke the words softly to the stars. “All of that pain, all of that hopeless waiting would go away.”

He tucked the wine bottle down the side of the chair, turned his hands over in his lap and stared down at them for a moment. Healing hands, the ultimate blessing. When his thoughts came he spoke them aloud, as if hearing the idea echo around him made it real. “I could take it away from him. That love. That blind devotion. I could take every piece of that aching away from him. I could carry it for him. If I could help him forget me it might be the greatest kindness, the truest love I could ever show him.”

 _If I can take this from you, if I can take that love and make it only mine to bear, you’ll be safe. That’s all that matters, my love, that you’re safe from them._ Aziraphale closed his eyes, wondered how it might feel to lay his hand over the demon’s heart and pull the echo of those years of longing clean from his soul, to take all of that pain away and hold it quietly in his own grasp for the rest of his days.

_Would you remember me at all or would I become a stranger to you? Would all of those memories slip away like a fistful of stardust tossed beyond the heavens? Would I even be able to take it, to heal you? Love shouldn’t be sickness but…this love is sin, and sin is sickness, so they say. A sinful soul is dying, something blackened around the edges, something rotten with decay, that’s what they tell us. They say that only we can heal those souls, only we can set them on the path to contrition, to forgiveness. Is it too late for you, forgiveness?_

_My oldest friend. My only friend? My love. The only one who walks this globe and knows who I am, what I am. Could I learn to live without you if it might save you? Could I do it, could I sacrifice everything we are, everything we might be, if I knew it would keep you safe?_

_Just one more day, that’s all I need. One more day to sit by your side, to see your smile, to love you the only way I know how. And then, Crowley, when our time here is through will we see just how brave this angel’s heart really is? Will we see if I love you enough to let you go, to set you free from the prison of loving me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, friends! I hope you enjoyed this one - just one chapter left to go! It'll be publishing on Wednesday 5th Feb, along with the art that's been created to run alongside it :D. I'm so excited for you all to see the pieces because what I've seen so far is incredible (and, yes, I cried when I saw the art because team crybaby for life).
> 
> Have a wonderful weekend and I'll catch you all soon in the comments <3


	3. This Love (Will Be Your Downfall)

As Florence bloomed to life and the city hummed with all the frenetic hustle and bustle of a busy morning, the city’s residents found their spirits inexplicably lifted as they strolled past a blond-haired figure who was nervously wringing his hands as he paced up and down the stretch of pathway in front of Da Vinci’s studio.

Aziraphale was fretting. It was the state of being he existed in more often than not, had become such a default emotion that even in the moments when he wasn’t fretting he would, inevitably, begin to fret over the fact he had nothing to fret about. Yes, Aziraphale and fretting had become synonymous over the centuries. That morning, though, the angel broke new ground by dredging up a brand new situation to fret over.

It was Crowley, naturally, as it so often was, who was the source of that morning’s fret session. It was only when Aziraphale had been making his way through Florence’s streets just after sunrise that he had realised that morning would be the first time he and Crowley would be spending any amount of time together directly after one of their secret stolen nights. It was customary, though unspoken, of course, that they parted ways for years afterwards, sometimes decades, but most often centuries, as if they needed to let the dust settle before they could face each other again. It was when their resolve was weakest, after all, in the hours, days, and weeks directly afterwards, and it was an unspoken agreement that they would give each other time to recover their willpower before they met again, lest they give into temptation and put either one of themselves at risk.

As circumstance and poor impulse control would have it, they would be spending the entirety of that day together, sitting side by side in silence as every emotion from the night before was still hot to the touch, flaring wildly just below the surface. How would it feel, Aziraphale wondered, to slip back into their usual routine without the buffer of having had decades to cool down from that night of escapism, of curling up together in a waking dream? Would there be any shred of awkwardness, perhaps? What if it was the worst case of all, what if he sensed regret from the demon?

 _Perhaps I should go now before I can find out that he considers the entire thing a mistake, that every one of those nights was just an error of judgement in his eyes._ The angel swallowed tightly, turning on the spot and retracing his steps for the hundredth time that hour. Six paces up, about turn, six paces down. Repeat, repeat, repeat. _I could leave Leonardo a note, apologise for leaving so abruptly. I could blame it on work, he always says I’m chained to my-_

Aziraphale didn’t get to finish fretting because Crowley chose that moment to round the corner and greet the angel with a cheery wave, as if they were nothing more complicated than two friends meeting for breakfast and a chat.

“Waiting for me, are you, angel? How kind.” The demon slung an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulder, fingers ruffling his hair as he tugged the angel along with him. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

 _On second thought, bit short notice to cancel, isn’t it? Shirking my responsibilities, most unbecoming,_ Aziraphale thought, feeling a smile lift the corners of his lips as he followed the demon into the studio, feet stepping as lightly as if he was walking on air.

“Good morning, Leonar-”

Aziraphale cut his greeting short as a hissed _shhh_ snaked out from Da Vinci’s mouth and the painter held up a palm in warning, barely looking up from the sketch he was working on as the studio door swung closed behind the angel and demon.

“Someone had a productive night,” Crowley whispered, leaning towards Aziraphale as he nodded down at the wad of sketches stacked up on the edge of Da Vinci’s desk. It wasn’t uncommon for the Italian to be struck by a flash of inspiration in the early hours of the morning and spend the rest of the night furiously working to bring new ideas to life. He had said to Crowley many years earlier that he suspected his brain rebelled against his demand that it rest itself overnight, that it dreamed up its most ingenuitive ideas during the night time hours to prove a point. “Onto anything good there, Leo?”

“Quiet!” The Italian looked up properly then, eyes widening as if he’d already forgotten he had company. He raised a finger to his lips, held Crowley’s gaze for a moment, and then turned his attention back to the paper on his desk.

“Right, well, we’ll make ourselves at home, shall we?” Crowley rolled his eyes, skipping lazily down the steps and clambering up onto the stool he’d spent most of the previous day perched atop. He patted the smooth wood of the stool next to him, looking up at Aziraphale. “Come on, angel, pull up a pew.”

“A pew? Bit…holy for you, isn’t it?” Holding up a hand in apology before Da Vinci had a chance to scold him for speaking, Aziraphale swept down the steps and took his seat next to Crowley. After a moment, he glanced across at the demon and dropped his voice. “And how are you this morning?”

“Positively buoyed,” the demon murmured, eyes trained straight ahead, long legs crossed neatly at the ankles as they rested on the table on front of them. He stifled a yawn, something that always struck the angel as amusing, just one more human habit that had insidiously wormed its way into the demon’s brain. “Although I’m still furious about the checkmate incident. I will admit I might have overreacted a little but I maintain you are a truly terrible excuse for an angel.”

“Of course I’m a terrible excuse for an angel, I spent half the night in bed with a demon and the other half thinking about what would have happened if I hadn’t left.”

Their eyes met then, and a thousand words unsaid filled the space between them. There was time for a shared smile, a moment lost to thoughts of _what if_ , and then Da Vinci slammed his hands down on the desk in front of them and the spell was broken.

“Good morning, my talkative friends. I entertained your…larks yesterday but today you will concentrate, won’t you?” Da Vinci narrowed his eyes, looking from angel to demon as if he was searching for any hint of dissent amongst the ranks. Satisfied they were compliant for the time being, he picked up the scroll of paper and pressed it into Aziraphale’s hand. “You, stop staring at him when you think I’m not looking.”

As Aziraphale spluttered protestations that were almost horrified enough to be believable, Crowley barked out a laugh of satisfaction and waggled a finger in the angel’s direction. “Truly terrible.”

Da Vinci watched the demon for a moment, then rolled his eyes and forced the apple into his hand. “And _you_ , I don’t know what you’re laughing about, don’t think I haven’t noticed what’s going on under the table. Today, you will keep your troublesome thighs to yourself.”

***

Aziraphale’s existence as a celestial entity did not leave much room for fun in his days. Or nights.

While the list of things he loved about Crowley bordered on infinite (almost, indeed, as infinite as the list of things that irritated, irked, and infuriated him about the demon), the point that resided close to the top was simple: they had fun together. Great big cavernous buckets of fun. Humans had always, for the most part, treated him with a sort of confused reverence, as if they could sense divinity in his soul, while in heaven he was, more often than not, treated with derision, as if he was somebody who was _other_. Yes, whether he found himself on Earth or in heaven, Aziraphale was all too aware that he didn’t fit in on either plane. And then there was Crowley, the only one who would lovingly tease him for hours on end, before taking him out for dinner as if there was nothing at all unusual about an angel and a demon sharing a meal, a bottle of wine and, on those rare, wonderful nights that were few and far between, a bed.

 _Was yesterday the last night of all?_ Aziraphale wondered, holding his position as he fought the urge to look in the demon’s direction. He could see the outline of his profile in his periphery, could just about make out waves of red hair that he had run his fingers through just hours before. _After today will you ever think of me again, my love? Will you still be my friend, I wonder, or will losing your love mean losing every piece of you? What day might I have planned for us if I’d known today would be our last like this? One final injustice, that we have to spend our last hours together in silence. There is so much I will never get to tell you: that I’m sorry I was too much of a coward to love you the way I should have; that the way you have loved me so patiently for all of these years has made me feel more blessed than heaven ever could; that if this life was fair I would never have to say goodbye to you, I would do what I truly dream of, I would follow you wherever you would lead me until that day comes that is the final day we will ever know._

“Antonio. Stop.” Da Vinci’s voice, heavy with warning, cut through Aziraphale’s musing and the angel turned to look at Crowley, who was looking back at the Italian as if he couldn’t fathom what he had done to deserve such a scolding. When Aziraphale dropped his gaze to find the demon’s thighs splayed wide, right leg hovering an inch from his own, it all became so very clear.

“It’s these thighs, angel,” Crowley whispered, letting his thigh gently come to rest against the angel’s after Da Vinci had returned to his sketch. “It’s like Da Vinci said. Troublesome things. Mind of their own. Honestly, if I didn’t know any better I’d think they-”

That time, the Italian didn’t need to look up to know that his words had absolutely not been heeded in the slightest. One last attempt at remaining calm, he decided. “I am _warning_ you.”

 _Yes,_ Aziraphale thought, forgetting to hide his smile as he caught Crowley’s eye, _fun is what it all comes back to in the end, my love._ How could it be, he mused, that there was so much space for fun within a love story that was so fraught with uncertainty and danger? How was it possible for laughter to underpin everything that they were when they were together, even if being together was near enough a death sentence? Doom and delight, terror and teasing. Darkness and light, reality and fantasy, it all went hand in hand to make up the celestial journey they had paced through the ages. The light, the fantasy, the teasing, it outweighed the doom every time. And that, Aziraphale knew, was why each stolen night could never be the last.

“Angel.” Crowley’s voice cut through his musing and Aziraphale glanced across to find the demon grinning wickedly at him, his eyes darting towards the scroll in his hand. “Pass me your scroll of divinity.”

“I think it’s just a blank piece of paper.” The angel smiled, handing the roll of parchment to Crowley as the demon passed him the apple in exchange. He nodded in understanding, curling one hand around the fruit as he settled into a perfect impression of the pose Crowley had held, between the fits of fidgeting, throughout the morning. He looked down at the apple, then up at the demon with a wink. “Now who’s the tempter?”

The demon’s tongue came to rest against his bottom lip as he nodded slowly, eyes roving up and down the length of the angel’s body. “You put me to shame, angel.”

Aziraphale breathed out a laugh and looked away, felt a flush rise in his cheeks as he sensed the demon’s eyes remaining firmly trained on his face. It was an unexpected pleasure to play the role of temptation for once, to be so acutely aware that he might be something to be desired. “Perhaps if you ask him very nicely our mutual friend will paint you a picture. It lasts a great deal longer than staring, so they say.”

“So they say, indeed.” Crowley’s words came out as something barely more than a purr, intention rumbling out from his throat.

A rustle from across the room then, as Da Vinci’s head swung up and he stared at the two of them in disbelief that they would defy him a third time. Both angel and demon fell silent, blinking back innocently as they held their poses beautifully, scroll and apple tilted just so, catching the light exactly as the Master had instructed. Da Vinci eyed them carefully, knew both parties well enough to decipher that a lack of suspicious activity was suspicious in itself. There was something…off about the scene in front of him but he was too engrossed in bringing his sketch to life that he couldn’t quite place it. Strange. It would come to him momentarily, he was sure. Pacified for the time being, he returned to his work.

Another rustle came in answer to his own, and then the high pitched screech of a stool scraping across the ground. Da Vinci looked up to discover Crowley and Aziraphale beaming back at him and he found the apple and scroll back in the correct hands. It was everything else that was incorrect. Particularly the fact that the angel and demon now sat in each other’s seats, the mirror image of the masterpiece he had been dreaming of. They were playing a trick on him. A joke. It was a joke to them, his inspiration, his grand aesthetic, his artistic _vision_. It was the honour of one’s lifetime, they said, to be painted by the Master, and these two fools were making a _mockery_ of his _vision_.

“What are you doing?” the Italian asked calmly. Too calmly.

Aziraphale swallowed, warily eyeing the pulsating vein in the painter’s temple. He reached out to flick his fingers against Crowley’s hip and dropped his voice. “I think we should swap back.”

Crowley caught the angel’s hand for a half-second, gave his fingers a gentle squeeze before moving them back to the angel’s own thigh. He leaned forward a little, voice bright and breezy as he called over to Da Vinci. “Thought we’d mix things up a bit, Leo. Don’t want your sketches to get stale, you know? We’re just thinking about your vision, mate.”

“My vision.” Da Vinci’s voice came out as little more than a whisper. Or a snarl, to be more accurate. “My vision? My VISION? Tell me, Antonio, what do you care for my vision? What do you care for anything other than this halo-haired _fop_ who sits to your right, or is it to your left? I cannot keep up with you. Either of you. I think you dislike each other, I sense such tension when you find yourselves face to face in my studio. Ah, perfect, no better chemistry than hatred. My masterpiece will be beautiful. But then, but _then_ I understand. Perhaps there _is_ some dislike there, somewhere, buried beneath the layers and layers and _layers_ of lust. It radiates from you, do you know that? It _drips_ from you, both of you.”

Crowley opened his mouth to protest, found nothing but a string of nonsensical sounds coming out as little more than a mewling whine. Beside him, Aziraphale was staring back at Da Vinci in open-mouthed horror, his eyebrows knitted together in panic as the worst case scenario of all came to fruition in startlingly revealing detail.

Da Vinci rose to his feet with such force that his chair toppled over, slamming back against the ground with a crash that left Aziraphale flinching in shock. On instinct, Crowley reached out again to wrap his fingers around the angel’s. Their eyes met for a heartbeat and the demon gave him a little nod of reassurance, of _it will be okay, angel, you’re safe with me, whatever happens._ Forever comforted by the touch of the demon’s skin against his, Aziraphale answered with a hint of a smile, the tiniest agreement of _I know, my love, I trust you._

“Oh, oh, is that a smile I see? Is this _amusing_ to you, Master Fell?” Da Vinci stalked towards them, sweeping a hand across the width of his desk to send a cascade of papers and paintbrushes and sticks of peach chalk swirling into the air, clouds of dust flaring up until the Master seemed to emerge from a smokescreen. “Is he so funny, this serpent who would tempt you to fall from my good graces? Is he so very, very funny to you? Is this what you want, Master Fell, to become like him? To _taste_ the apple, to take a bite? You long for it, I see it in your eyes, the way you watch him as he walks, the way your eyes are drawn to his…offerings. Yes, yes, nothing escapes the Master, my friends. Why are you…Antonio, are you _smiling_ , still? You would _smile_ while I scold you?”

Leonardo was many things: generous, worldly, a genius beyond anything the world had ever seen. He was a funny man, and a good friend. He was also, by his own admission, tightly wound in the temper department. Proud, too. When he caught the buried smile on the demon’s face, the imprint of teeth on the angel’s bottom lip as he fought back laughter at the absurdity of the situation, the Master plunged from anger to rage.

As Da Vinci let out a roar of fury and snapped a paint palette clean in two across his knee, Aziraphale thought about the archangel Gabriel. He thought about the cold, empty corridors of heaven. He thought about the days before he had found his way into the archangel Raphael’s care. He thought about loneliness and solitude and every punishment that might await him if his and Crowley’s secret was ever discovered. And yet, even with the thought of heaven’s full judgement thundering around his brain he couldn’t swallow the desperate bubble of hysterical laughter rising in his throat.

 _I’m perched on a stool in an artist’s studio in Florence, sitting next to my sworn-enemy-cum-secret-lover, while Leonardo da Vinci creates his own atmospheric smoke machine and shouts about the way I stare at a demon’s trouser offerings._ The more he ruminated on the situation the more it filled him with glee, then he heard Crowley breathe in a sharp inhale that turned into an ungainly snort as a chuckle escaped his lips, and suddenly Aziraphale felt tears streak down his cheeks as the pressure of holding in his giggles grew impossible and he let it out. All of it. Every ounce of tension, of fear, of amusement at their situation, every little inch of love and happiness and stress that he can kept at bay rolled up out of him as shrieking peals of laughter.

Then came the sound of wild cackling from beside him, and the angel turned his head to find Crowley doubled over, one hand slapping against his knee as he joined him in raucous amusement, as if the absolute madness of the situation they had somehow found themselves in was too much to contain.

“Stop _LAUGHING_!” the painter cried, hurling both halves of the broken paint palette ceiling-ward until they smacked against the plaster, falling back down to the ground and shattering into untold pieces. The Italian stood stock still, watching the angel and demon as they wiped their eyes, looking at each other as if they were enjoying a brilliant joke that nobody else but the two of them would ever understand.

Da Vinci’s eyes narrowed once more and when he took in the sight in front of him, of his muses laughing in his face, it was as if his vision was inexplicably blurred with red, a flood of blood clouding his gaze. They called it the red mist, an anger that descended so suddenly and violently it was akin to the snap of an elastic band pushed beyond its limit.

That was it.

Leonardo da Vinci had, like the metaphorical elastic band in his mind, snapped.

The Master threw his head back and howled out a sound that was halfway between the cry of a fairytale werewolf and a bark of laughter, both hands coming to rest against his stomach as if he too was laughing at a most hilarious private joke. He righted himself, satisfied he had the attention of the two men seated in front of him, and then he linked his fingers, stretching his arms out until he heard the satisfying crack of his knuckles. Finally, he leaned back against his desk, perched on the edge as he crossed his legs.

It was time to begin.

“I will start with you, Master Fell. Have you felt the touch of this man?”

Laughter died in Aziraphale’s throat and he fell silent, casting a nervous look across at Crowley as he folded his hands primly in his lap. He realised, rather swiftly, that he had preferred the situation thirty seconds earlier when Da Vinci had been shouting. This cool, eerily calm Da Vinci was infinitely more terrifying. “Pardon, Leonardo? I don’t think I-”

“Did I stutter, Master Fell?”

“Er, no, I just…”

“Did I stumble over my words, Master Fell? Did I slip, perhaps, into a tongue you are not familiar with?”

“No, my good man, I believe I heard you correctly.”

“As I was saying then, have you felt the touch of this man?”

“Well.” Aziraphale drew himself up until he was sitting perfectly straight-backed, gave a chaste little cough of embarrassment. “I don’t believe that has any relevance to today’s proceedings.”

“No, no, I quite think it does. You see, when I invited you to my Italy, to my home, it was to sit for me. An honour, as you know. Yes, I invited you here to sit for me. I did not, in case there was any confusion, invite you to my home so you could giggle and flirt and bat your eyelashes at our mutual friend.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve made your point.”

“Actually, Master Fell, I don’t believe I have even begun to make my point. In fact, you haven’t answered my question that I asked so politely.” Da Vinci paused, raised one hand in Crowley’s direction as if there might have been any confusion about the question. “Have you, or have you not, felt the touch of this man? We have a great many hours of sunshine yet, my friend, I can ask you many more times if you would-”

“No!” Aziraphale cried, looking down at the ground to avoid Crowley’s gaze, which he was fairly sure would be made up of a combination of amusement and interest. “Well, I mean, it rather depends on the context.”

“Oh, for Somebody’s sake, angel.” Crowley’s admonishment was a quiet hiss as the demon rolled his eyes. “You’re hanging yourself here.”

“You.” Da Vinci thrust a finger at Crowley. “It will be your turn soon enough. Now, Master Fell, you are quite correct that I did not elaborate on my question, I can see how your confusion has arisen. You see, my question could have meant any number of touches, couldn’t it? Yes, that’s it, you follow me now, I see. But I was talking about one touch only, the type of touch you might exchange as the night draws in and the moon may be the only witness to your…”

“No, no, _no,_ NO.” Aziraphale leaped from his stool then, waving his hands at nobody in particular as he paced a tight circle in one direction and then the other. “There is absolutely _no_ need for this line of questioning. If you’re trying to humiliate me then you’ve done a bang up job of it. Now, _please_ can we return to the painting?”

“Humiliate you?” Da Vinci raised his eyebrows, as if the accusation hurt him deep in his very core. “Why would I want to humiliate you, my friend? No, no, I told you yesterday, didn’t I, that I don’t believe art is a window, that I believe it is a mirror. I am only telling you what I see when I look into that mirror’s depths, what I truly see when I watch the two of you.”

The Italian’s voice had softened and Aziraphale and Crowley sighed in tandem. The ordeal was over. They could relax, at last. It hadn’t been that bad, all things considered. They both knew of Da Vinci’s way with words, knew that if he had truly wanted to humiliate them it could have been much, much…

“When I look into the mirror of you, gentlemen, do you know what I see? I see two lovers who want to know the pleasures of each other’s bodies. Souls and minds, too, but the desire to know each other’s bodies as intimately as you know each other’s hearts, that is what I see when I watch you. You want to take him in your hands, do you not, Master Fell, and then when you have felt him you wish to taste him? And you, my Antonio, you need him to see you, to touch you, to _taste_ you, and then to take you, all of you, is that not right? That is what you dream of when you are together, when you are apart, to know every pleasure of the flesh. Because in all of the years you have travelled this world and sampled its offerings, the pleasures of desire have never been on your menu, have they? You are waiting, I know this, for each other. And it would be a sweet thing, you see, if it was not a thing that _made a mockery of my vision!_ Now, gentlemen, I will ask you one final time to _SIT. STILL._ DO YOU UNDERSTAND OR ARE YOU TOO CLOUDED WITH GLUTTONOUS LUST TO USE YOUR EARS?”

He paused for breath, letting every drop of cringeworthy honesty be squeezed from his words, and then he looked from angel to demon with a satisfied little smile as they stared down at the ground, too sheepish to dare look each other in the eye.

“Do you think they call me the Master simply because I paint pretty pictures? You are not, contrary to your misguided beliefs, the smartest souls in every room, gentlemen.”

With a final flick of his wrist, Da Vinci bent low to pick up his chair, smiling to himself as precious, perfect silence settled over the room. As he sat down on his chair and picked up the sole piece of chalk that had survived his outburst, the Master sighed happily and resumed his sketch, looking up at the two horrified faces opposite him.

Peace, at last.

***

Da Vinci smiled down at the sketch on his desk, sighing happily at the neat arch of Aziraphale’s eyebrow that he had finally managed to conquer. It had been a long road but there it was, staring back at him, perfectly curved.

The Italian heard a low creak and looked up, smile faltering as he began mustering the energy to tame the two unruly models who had caused him such stress over the past two days. Happily, though, the sound was nothing more than the slip of the stool legs against the ground as Crowley adjusted his position. The demon smiled in apology, lips pressed together in a slim crescent as he resumed his pose, his expression as meek as the painter had ever seen it.

A grunt of approval escaped Da Vinci’s lips as he returned to his work and cross-hatched a shadow on the underside of the apple Crowley was holding. Perhaps he had finally got through to them. Perhaps they might heed his words. Perhaps, he dared hope, they would not be resigned to waiting for many more years. _Time stays long enough for those who use it_ , he mused, _none of us, not beast, nor man, nor something of the great beyond, knows how many grains of sand remain in the hourglass._

There was silence in the studio as Da Vinci leaned close to the paper on his desk, fingers wrapped around a stick of chalk as he stole quick glances up at Crowley’s hand as he sketched the sharp lines of the demon’s wrist. Content that he was free from being the focal point for a little while, at least, Aziraphale let his shoulders relax as he disappeared into contemplation the depth of the decision he had made the night before.

It had seemed like such an obvious choice, such a simple thing, to give Crowley the freedom of forgetting him. It was under the cover of darkness that he felt his most brave and, perhaps, his most angelic. But there, under the glare of sunlight, he felt his resolve begin to weaken. Just as the nights were the time for secrets, for heart-rending honesty, for bravery; the days lent themselves to lightness, to play, but also to compliance.

Compliance. Duty. Aziraphale sighed. If his desire was obvious enough for Da Vinci to sense it, how could he even begin to hope that Gabriel wouldn’t smell it on his skin when he returned to heaven? Would it be his own foolish lust that would lead Crowley into danger? Better then, if he carried the burden alone, rendered it unrequited with one press of his palm to the demon’s chest. Painful, yes, but safe.

Would it be the most selfless act of his life, Aziraphale wondered, to give up their love to save Crowley? Or would it be the most selfish, to steal that love away so he would never have to be brave enough to stand by the demon's side in the face of heaven’s judgement?

 _It’s not your decision to make._ The thought had appeared in his mind that morning along with the dawn, and Aziraphale had been fighting a silent battle with it ever since. _It is a gift, to fall in love, who are you to take that from him?_ _Why now? Why have you chosen this day to steal his love away? He had loved you for all of these years and you used that love to heal your soul, to fuel your days. So why now?_

Aziraphale swallowed tightly, tried to bury the truth so deeply in his heart it could never be found. The thing was, though, that he could hide his reality from the rest of the world, and beyond it, but there was no pocket in his heart deep enough to hide the truth from his own mind.

The angel closed his eyes, sighed, and then, for once, allowed himself the luxury of honesty. _Because everything changed the moment I realised I love him just as hopelessly and desperately as I always feared. Before I gave it a name I could hold onto the hope that what I felt wasn’t really love, not truly, that it was curiosity or infatuation or nothing deeper than lust. I could pretend those nights together were weakness, or fantasy, a storybook come to life. I could almost convince myself that the dance we’ve been performing for all of these centuries was friendship, or companionship, or fondness. But it’s not. It’s love. I love him, and it terrifies me. I’m an angel, a being of love. Love is everything I should already know. But when I’m with him I feel as though I know nothing at all, as if every part of this life is new. What if I don’t know how to do this? What if I don’t know how to love him? What if this love was only ever meant for moonlit whispers, what if it was never supposed to see the sun?_

 _And that is why you want to take it from him._ When the words swirled in Aziraphale’s mind they were cold, frozen around the edges with judgement. _Not to ease his pain, not to save him. It’s to save yourself, isn’t it? You would steal away the only thing he has left in order to ease your own fear. They were right, you are weak. You were right, you are a coward. If you truly love him, if you truly want to be brave then love him the way he deserves. Love him with everything you have. Love can never be fear. Make your choice._

Aziraphale felt an ache of heat against the length of his hand as Crowley's finger brushed slowly against his. A tremor, a shiver, and then a decision that would come to change the world. The angel reached out, slid his fingers through the demon’s and pressed his fingertips to the back of the demon’s hand. There they sat, fingers interlaced as their joined hands swung gently between them. Da Vinci had looked up at the sound of a small sigh escaping Crowley’s lips, he turned his attention back to his work a moment later, after just enough time had passed for the painter to swallow a smile when he noted the amendment to their pose.

_We have always loved each other, Crowley, haven’t we? For all of these years, even if we could never give it a name or speak it aloud, even if the only way we could love each other was through patience and teasing and finding our way back to each other over and over again, come what may._

_I love you, such a simple thing to say, but such a dangerous one. They hold the world in them, those three little words, as I hold the world in my hand as we sit here. I can’t say it, my love, not yet. But I hope, for now, that this is enough. A promise that someday I will love you the way you deserve._

As an angel and a demon sat together in a quiet little studio in Florence, the angel closed his eyes, wrapped his fingers around the demon’s hand and tightened his grip. Once. Twice. Three times.

Three little words. Three little squeezes.

After a heartbeat, the demon answered with an echo.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

***

“We are finished, my friends. You are my favourite frustrations but I have, at last, what I need. You are free to go.” Da Vinci’s voice cracked when he spoke, unused for the hours in which he had disappeared into the work, sketching and painting and swirling colour and light and shade alike until it was as if he was in a trance, or a dream. And then, it was over. The work was complete, and the sun was fading from the sky, leaving streaks of fire in her wake. He rose from his chair, rifling through the pile of discarded sketches until he found what he was looking for. He smiled, and then he tore it in two, clean down the middle. “You may take these with you, one of the many masterpieces you doomed with your chaos. A souvenir, perhaps, of your retreat to Florence.”

Rolling the papers up in neat scrolls, before fastening each with a twirl of brown string, Da Vinci passed one half to Aziraphale and took the angel’s face in his hands. “Goodbye, my sweet friend. You are a wonder, remember that, you do not need to be afraid.”

“Thank you, Leonardo. I’m sorry for the distractions.” Aziraphale smiled, one hand braced against the painter’s forearm, and then he took a step back and looked across at the demon who was watching him carefully, waiting for him to set the tone of their inevitable farewell. He hesitated, opened his mouth as if he might have something to say, but then he turned to leave, calling out goodbye as if bidding an acquaintance safe travels. “Goodbye, Crowley. I’ll see you again.”

As the door swung closed between them and the sound of the angel’s footsteps disappeared down the steps outside, Crowley sighed, closing his eyes as he tapped his fingertips against his forehead. “Stupid, _stupid_ …”

“Are you going to sit on that stool feeling like an idiot until the moon rises?” Da Vinci asked, as he pulled a broom free from the depths of the marble cabinet and began sweeping underneath his desk. When the demon stayed still, nose wrinkled in confusion, the man rolled his eyes, flinging one hand out towards the door. “Well, go on then. There is still time to say goodbye properly.”

***

“Angel! Wait!”

Aziraphale turned to find Crowley standing at the bottom of the steps, hands splayed across his thighs as he doubled over to catch his breath.

The demon stood tall a moment later, raising his eyebrows as if his own lack of physical fitness had been a wholly shocking discovery. “Wow, I…really thought I could run further than that.”

“It's all that sprawling you do.” Aziraphale smiled, lacing his hands in front of his stomach as he moved towards the demon. “Doesn't exactly raise the heart rate, does it?”

“You didn’t say goodbye.”

“I did, I said _goodbye, Crowley. I’ll see you again._ That’s definitely a goodbye.”

“Not a proper one.”

Aziraphale looked away, front teeth jumping against his lip as he bit back a smile. He stepped towards the demon, cast a glance out to each side and then, as he found them alone, took Crowley’s hands in his. “Then we should praise the Almighty for second chances. If didn’t say goodbye to you properly, Crowley, it’s because I don’t know how to say goodbye to you. I’ve never been very good at letting you go.”

_I hold all the power in heaven and Earth to do what I will. I can create something out of nothing, I can take away somebody’s pain, I can quietly take somebody’s hand and ease them into the great beyond, ensure that their final memories are those of peace and love, that regret and hate in their hearts fade away into nothingness. Miracles, yes, but what about the things that fall beyond the realm of duty? What about falling asleep to the sound of the love of my life whispering against my skin, what about waking up next to the one I spent the night dreaming of? What about building a home with another, or does creating a life of my own choosing transcend the notion of a miracle?_

A pause then, the sound of breath hitching in the angel’s throat. Crowley felt a flash of hope in his chest, registered the tempest of emotions storming across Aziraphale’s face. _Is this the moment_ , the demon wondered, _is this the moment that we finally tell each other the truth? Is this the moment you tell me I’m not the only one foolishly chasing after love I can barely comprehend?_

Aziraphale’s face crumpled, sadness rolling off of him as his eyes grew wet and he reached for the demon’s face with shaking hands, fingers sliding up into the red tendrils of hair that curled beneath his ears. And then the angel really was crying as he pulled Crowley to him and held him close for a moment, only ever for a moment. They broke apart and Aziraphale reached up to kiss the demon’s forehead, as tenderly and sweetly as if it was the first time. Or the last.

_I don’t know if I can do this but…was it fate, my love, that you came after me for one final goodbye? Would this be loving you the way you deserve, laying my hand over your heart and taking away your devotion to me? Erasing your desires, your dreams, everything that they could ever use to hurt you? Your memories of us: the smiles, the tears, the forbidden nights, and the days where we laughed and laughed until our faces hurt, the times when we said nothing at all, when we didn’t need to, when simply walking together and watching the world was enough?_

_I don’t want to be alone. You are the only love I’ve ever known. Without you, what would I be? An angel. I would just be an angel. I might even learn to be a good one, in time._

_Do it. Do it now. Save him while it is still a choice you can make._

He laid his hand over the demon’s heart, looking up into those golden eyes, the ones he saw in the deepest dark of night, in the loneliest moments, in the hardest days. _Please don’t forget all of me, my love._

“No.” Crowley caught his hand, tugged it free from his chest. “No, angel. What are you doing? Don’t take this from me. I want it.”

“I…I don’t want you have to carry this any longer. It’s a dangerous thing, to love me. It’s a curse.”

When Crowley spoke his words were soft and there was a sweetness to them warmer than any words the angel had heard, or read, or dreamed. “Loving you is all I have, Aziraphale.”

In return, Crowley placed his hand over the angel’s heart and they looked into each other’s eyes, both feeling the sharp thud of a heart beneath their palm as they wondered if they could exist without the other. If, indeed, they would ever have to.

“It could all be gone,” Aziraphale whispered. “It would only take a heartbeat.”

It was the angel who moved first, dropping his hand from Crowley’s chest as he understood that there was nothing, no power in heaven or hell or anywhere in between that could ever heal that curse they shared, together.

The sky was growing dark, their powers were needed elsewhere, on opposite corners of that pale blue dot they had come to call home, and there was only time for an angel and a demon to share one last embrace. At the sound of footsteps around the corner, Crowley pulled back, if only for the simple reason that he couldn’t bear to feel the angel break away from him.

He tucked a stray curl of hair behind Aziraphale’s ear. “Maybe next time we escape it will be somewhere warmer. We’ll find that hazy heat we dreamed of last night, what do you think?”

“Anywhere. I’ll go anywhere to find you. Just not too long, please.” The angel pressed his forehead to Crowley’s for a moment, reaching for his hand and squeezing it three times. _I love you._

He left the demon standing alone, watching him walk away. Until next time.

***

When Crowley returned to the studio, sighing as he loped down the steps, he found Da Vinci seated at his desk, reordering half-finished sketches as he muttered absent-mindedly to himself.

 _"_ Some works are easy, they just spill out of you. Some take longer to bloom. Some, even longer. Those works, the ones we have to be patient for, those are the true masterpieces in the end. They are always, I promise you, worth the wait.” As the Italian spoke he rose from his chair, pacing slowly over to the demon before he pressed his half of the souvenir sketch into his hands. “I will see you soon, Antonio, my friend.”

Crowley looked down, smiling, and nodded slowly. “Thank you, Leonardo.”

The demon paused in the doorway, treated himself to one last moment of peace before he emerged back to reality, back to work, back to existence as something hellbound and broken. He unrolled the sketch in his hands, found a perfect rendition of Aziraphale’s face staring up at him. He smiled down at it for a second, and another, and then he looked over his shoulder at the old Italian he had grown so fond of over the years. “Leo, you old fool, you’ve given me the wrong half.”

Da Vinci looked back at his friend, the demon, and as the old man smiled there was that fabled glint in his eye, only visible in a certain slant of light. Or, perhaps, in a mirror.

“Oh, did I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good day, pals! I truly hope you’ve enjoyed this short story (which is Stolen Night V, for those who are reading the full Ineffably Yours series) about an angel and a demon and a very sassy Leonardo da Vinci.
> 
> This story was prompted by the Paul Kidby Da Vinci-inspired portraits of Crowley and Aziraphale that were featured in the 2019 special editions of Good Omens. I loved the detail that the two portraits were originally one that had been torn in half and the idea for this story came to me when I thought about how that situation might have played out. In case you haven't seen the portraits, I added a picture here: https://imgur.com/a/yj9wJHY
> 
> Now, let’s talk art! This is my piece as an author for the Good Omens Big Bang and I got to work with two wonderfully talented artists who brought this story to life through four amazing art pieces, which you can see here:
> 
> *** Sator’s incredible art for Da Vinci’s ineffable eyebrow-related meltdown in chapter one, and the filled-with-intention chess game in chapter two (while you’re there, PLEASE check out their Discworld-inspired art because hnnnngh, I love it so much): 
> 
> \- Tumblr: https://sator-the-wanderess.tumblr.com/post/190658375355/heres-two-pieces-i-did-for-the-goodomensbigbang  
> \- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B8Lkdd9pABd/
> 
> *** CynSyn’s beautiful, moody art for the stolen night in chapter two, and the origin of the ole three squeezes in chapter three (again, while you’re there please please have a scroll through the rest of their art, it’s truly gorgeous and I’ll forever scream about both Azirphale’s hair and tHe LiGhT because you know how I feel about light 😂): 
> 
> \- AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22571794/chapters/53938759  
> \- Tumblr: https://amadness2method.tumblr.com/post/190658596586/stolen-nights-dreams-of-the-future-top-holding  
> \- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B8LlvOtjShv/
> 
> And our master post for this fic, which is a bit redundant if you’ve already made your way here but, still, please enjoy Sator's amazing banner!: https://amadness2method.tumblr.com/post/190659216656/only-love-can-hurt-like-this
> 
> Thank you to the GOBB mods, who have been absolutely brilliant at keeping this entire community-wide project running so smoothly. My project manager self bows down to the four of you, you made everything so simple for artists and authors and beta readers alike and it’s so appreciated <3.
> 
> One last thank you to all of you for reading this and for your ongoing support for both this story and the wider Ineffably Yours universe, I hope I’m able to convey even a fraction of the gratitude that I feel to have found such a sweet, funny group of people who enjoy what I write. This entire fanfic experience wouldn’t be a smidge as enjoyable as it is if it wasn’t for you all.
> 
> Yours, ineffably (just so you know, I both swoon and cringe every time I write those words to you all because life is about balance 😂),
> 
> SecondHandNews <3
> 
> P.S. My next posting dates are:  
> Fri 7th: Part 3, Chapter Six  
> Weds 12th: Part 3, Chapter Seven

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [GOBB 2019 Art for #155 Only Love Can Hurt Like This (Ineffably Yours: Stolen Nights)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22571794) by [AMadness2Method (CynSyn)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynSyn/pseuds/AMadness2Method), [CynSyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynSyn/pseuds/CynSyn)




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